Blood and Gold
by iloveliterature
Summary: A few people know that Iron Man was made in blood and gold, only two know where. And both are dead. A small series of stories centered around Tony, i will take requests.
1. Chapter 1

Blood and Gold

Tony has always lived in a world of blood and gold. He only noticed it after Yinsen. When the colours became clear, no longer obstructed by alcohol and a desperate desire to never show the media something worth breaking. Something capable of being torn apart.

When the blood was on his hands and coating the shrapnel in his heart, spilled at his feet in a river that would forever stain his skin.

With the taste of a gritty gold in his mouth, painful, dry, cutting into throat, the grains of it beneath his feet and the glare of it in his eyes.

He had always known that all his money came to him bathed in blood, but he never had to see it. Not until he had his weapons in his heart and a dead man's words seared beneath his eyelids.

So on the armour, under layers of scarlet red and blinding yellow, lay a colour dark and rich and dull and shining. He made his armour in blood and gold and hid it all with a bright smile and a cocky attitude and a few layers of brilliant paint.


	2. Fathers, Parallels

**Of Fathers And Parallels**

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"Obie was a great man"

Standing at Obie's grave, saying a thousand words that ultimately meant nothing. Tony was struck by the parallels between Howard and Obie and they made him want to scream or maybe throw something. He didn't of course, even Pepper can handle only so much bad press and he didn't really feel like soothing ruffled feathers at the moment, so he continued, on and on and on...

"What can I say, he kept SI afloat when i was too young to manage or to drunk"

The crowd laughed like good little puppets, only ever going through the motions, the entire affair was essentially a publicity stunt. Obie didn't have friends ( I once thought I was, how foolish of me) only business partners and those he exploited (Ah, you're a golden goose Tony). No one here actually cared about him, they only wanted to see if Tony would break. He didn't though, well at least not at this moment, but perhaps a long time ago he did. Maybe that was why people generally didn't stay, although it mattered little, Tony never minded being alone because he never really was. A thousand, thousand ideas burst into life inside his head, creatures of metal and programming happy to stay by his side and a star that burned beside his heart, what need did he have for humans?

"It really is such a shame, he had a brilliant mind, he'll be greatly missed"

Tony wondered if they would notice that the eulogy he spoke now was nearly the same he spoke at Howards.

Parallels, he wondered why he didn't notice them sooner. At both funerals he talked about the great person that he personally hated, said lines that were handed to him because he was too numb to care.

Parallels. After this, Tony thought, I am going to get very, very drunk ( It never helped though, never quite drowned out of the voices and memories).

The reason he will never forgive Obie is very much the same reason he never forgave his father.

Howard ripped out his heart with his expectations and disapproval, Obie ripped out the heart that he had built for himself, from metal scraps and poisoned energy, but still his own.

He had thought both of them his father and both of them deemed it their right to control him.

In the end, Tony couldn't find it in himself to surprised when both of them flew a little too close to the sun.


	3. An act told in parts

**This is different from the previous chapter and i am trying something new. If people like it i will continue and probably make it into a separate story. So tell me what you think!**

Tony is four when he wonders if his father loves him. His fingers are small and chubby and the circuit board in his hands whirrs gently. His father spares him only a passing glance and it is Jarvis, faithful, loving, caring, way too good to be true Jarvis, that puts a hand on his shoulder and quietly tells him he did good. He doesn't say he's proud, because that would be stepping over boundaries that Tony has never cared for, but it shines in his eyes all the same.

Tony is five when his Father first tells him that Starks have iron in their blood. Mother tells him they have gold in their hearts and Jarvis that they have steel in their mind. Tony is tired of metaphors and just wants someone to tell him the truth.

Tony is six when his mother teaches him how to play the piano. He is on her lap and her fingers cover his as she guides him. Slowly the melody of the lullabies she sings to him at night drift through the air. These are some of his favourite times, when his mother isn't away trying to make up for his father's War Monger reputation. And her depression isn't so bad that she turns to drinking. For now he enjoys his Mothers soft voice and perfume that smells of honeysuckle and jasmine.

Tony is eight and at one of his mothers charity banquets when a large man says something to him in Russian. He doesn't understand so he smiles politely and nods. Later Jarvis tells him the man had said "Tony Stark, you will be more brilliant then your father one day. I am sure of it". Tony is eight and that is the first time someone has ever measured him against Howard and doesn't find him lacking, it is also his last. He resolves to learn Russian and he never forgets the man's face. (It's a painful kind of irony that four weeks later Tony is kidnapped on the orders of a large man with a Russian accent, this man however isn't the first to betray him so he doesn't feel too bad about setting the man's safe house on fire. It is only the man's misfortune that he is still in the house)

Tony is nine when Father becomes Howard. His parents had been fighting, Mother hadn't wanted him to go on the latest arctic trip and Howard was angry and drunk. He struck out carelessly and the blow glanced off Maria's cheek, they both had been shocked. Howard had muttered something unintelligible and took a bottle of scotch with him to the lab. Maria had turned to get a drink of her own and went to her rooms, she still found time to sing him to sleep that night. Tony had been furious and had resolved to kill Howard. It's not like it would be hard, Starks were born to be weapons anyway.

Tony is eleven when Howard teaches him to shoot, he has already been taught multiple forms of martial arts but Howard thinks it's time he learn who to use the weapons that he will one day make. Howard tells him from the beginning that "you'll never be as good as Captain America but you might as well have some skills". Tony wonders if he is being intentionally cruel.

Tony is seventeen and the Winter Soldier kills his father but not his mother. The press labels it as an accident, Howard was working with volatile chemicals and they just reacted. The explosion destroyed most of the lab and Howards body was unrecognizable. Only Tony, and possibly Maria and Jarvis know the real story. By seventeen Tony was an old hand at kidnapping and revenge, so he had Jarvis investigate all of Howards enemies. It was for that reason that he wasn't surprised when he woke to see the Winter Soldier scoping out the mansion. Tony had opened the door and let him inside, he didn't yet know how to completely cover his tracts so he instructed the soldier on how to make the chemical cocktail. Funny how no one thought it was a coincidence that the explosion never touched anything outside the lab despite the fact that the walls were never reinforced. The Winter Soldier left as quickly as he came and Tony never did figure out why the assassin hadn't killed him too, though he had several theories. No one questioned it, after all Howard wasn't the only inventor to be killed by their creation


End file.
